Feature, short and animation films from Georgia in Sarajevo Film Fest programme

Four films from Georgia, ranging between short works to student productions, are on the big screen for an audience of over 100,000 cinephiles at the ongoing Sarajevo Film Festival — the leading cinema event of the Balkan region.

This year’s programme of the major festival features films by Levan Akin, a Swedish-based director with Georgian roots, as well as Irina Jordania, Rati Tsiteladze and Petre Tomadze, with the works distributed throughout various sections of the event.

Akin’s recently released And Then We Danced is part of the feature competition, bringing the story of a bond between two performers in a Georgian national dance ensemble to the festival.

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In the film involving a Georgian cast, the encounter between the male artists introduces a dramatic element to the story on the backdrop of the dance troupe with conservative heritage.

In the short competition section, Jordania brings to viewers 12 K Marx Street, in which her protagonist connects to a stranger — and to her childhood — after her phone call is answered from the other end of the line she used to dial over and over again.

It is revealed that the stranger who answers the phone lives in the woman’s childhood home — the home the woman’s family were forced to leave to escape war. The two start to form a bond” — Sarajevo Film Festival.

A still from ‘Night Session’ by director Petre Tomadze. Screenshot from the film.

RatiTsiteladze is also featured in the Balkan event with his documentary Prisoner of Society, which explores a personal experience in the realm of oppressive circumstances.

[The work is a] journey into the world and mind of a young transgender woman, trapped between her personal desire for freedom and the traditional expectations of her parents that threaten their unity,” — Sarajevo Film Festival.

Rounding off the Georgian participation in Sarajevo, the student film competition section will have Night Session from Petre Tomadze, an animated look at “how neighbours sharing a courtyard are both shaped by, and indifferent to, domestic violence”.

Find the full programme of this year’s festival, set to close on Friday, here.